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Letters to William James

Htabs

Record

Type:

Manuscript

Author:

Peirce, Charles Sanders

Title:

Letters to William James

Id:

L [R] 224

Year:

1897-1909

Description:

From the Robin Catalogue:
One letter (fragment) to CSP, n.d.; one postal card to CSP, Rome November 26, 1900; one telegram to CSP, March 20, 1903; several letter drafts and fragments of drafts from, most of which are dated or have been dated, with the dates ranging from [April 1897] to [December 25, 1909].

Published, in part, as EP 2:492-502; and NEM 3:788-878 (“L224: [April 1897], [c. 18 April 1903], 18 April 1903 [two letters from William James Collection], [August 1905], 26 February 1909, 25 December 1909 [William James Collection]).

Collected Papers, Cross-reference index:
“Correspondence, 1897-1909, in the William James Collection,
Houghton Library. [CP] 6.478n*, 8.117n10, and 8.249-315 are from it.
Cf. [CP] 7.44n17 and 8.39n1.”

Language:

English

Posted:

Jan 06, 2013, 13:40 by Sami Paavola

Last revised:

Oct 06, 2014, 00:29 by Commens Admin

APA

Peirce, C. S. (1897-1909). Letters to William James. L [R] 224.

BibTeX

The entry in BibTeX format.

@unpublished{Peirce1897-1909,

author = "Charles S. Peirce",
title = "{Letters to William James. L [R] 224}",
year = 1897-1909,
abstract = "{From the Robin Catalogue:
One letter (fragment) to CSP, n.d.; one postal card to CSP, Rome November 26, 1900; one telegram to CSP, March 20, 1903; several letter drafts and fragments of drafts from, most of which are dated or have been dated, with the dates ranging from [April 1897] to [December 25, 1909].
Published, in part, as EP 2:492-502; and NEM 3:788-878 (“L224: [April 1897], [c. 18 April 1903], 18 April 1903 [two letters from William James Collection], [August 1905], 26 February 1909, 25 December 1909 [William James Collection]).
Collected Papers, Cross-reference index:
“Correspondence, 1897-1909, in the William James Collection,
Houghton Library. [CP] 6.478n*, 8.117n10, and 8.249-315 are from it.
Cf. [CP] 7.44n17 and 8.39n1.”
}",
language = "English",
note = "From the Commens Bibliography | \url{http://www.commens.org/bibliography/manuscript/peirce-charles-s-1897-1909-letters-william-james-l-r-224}"
}

It rather annoys me to be told that there is anything novel in my three categories; for if they have not, however confusedly, been recognized by men since men began to think, that condemns them at once. To make them as distinct as it is in their nature to be is, however, no small task. I do not suppose they are so in my own mind; and evidently, it is not in their nature to be sharp as ordinary concepts. But I am going to try to make here a brief statement that, I think, will do something for them.

By the phenomenon I mean whatever is before our minds in any sense. The three categories are supposed to be the three kinds of elements that attentive perception can make out in the phenomenon.

All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. I do not mean by “collateral observation” acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes.

There are two kinds of Deduction; and it is truly significant that it should have been left for me to discover this. I first found, and subsequently proved, that every Deduction involves the observation of a Diagram (whether Optical, Tactical, or Acoustic) and having drawn the diagram (for I myself always work with Optical Diagrams) one finds the conclusion to be represented by it. Of course, a diagram is required to comprehend any assertion. My two genera of Deductions are first those in which any Diagram of a state of things in which the premisses are true represents the conclusion to be true and such reasoning I call Corollarial because all the corollaries that different editors have added to Euclid’s Elements are of this nature. Second kind. To the Diagram of the truth of the Premisses something else has to be added, which is usually a mere May-be, and then the conclusion appears. I call this Theorematic reasoning because all the most important theorems are of this nature.

…suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. I reply, let us suppose: “It is a stormy day.” Here is another sign. Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine - not the character of it, but the identity of it. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. Now it is easy to see that my attempt to draw this three-way, “trivialis” distinction, relates to a real and important three-way distinction, and yet that it is quite hazy and needs a vast deal of study before it is rendered perfect.

The Dynamical Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign. This Interpretant derives its character from the Dyadic category, the category of Action. This has two aspects, the Active and the Passive, which are not merely opposite aspects but make relative contrasts between different influences of this Category as More Active and More Passive. In psychology this category marks Molition in its active aspect of a force and its passive aspect as a resistance. When an imagination, a day-dream fires a young man’s ambition or any other active passion, that is a more Active variety of his Dynamical Interpretation of the dream. When a novelty excites his surprise, - and the scepticism that goes along with surprise, - this is a more Passive variety of Dynamical Interpretant. I am not speaking of the feelings of passion or of surprise as qualities. For those qualities are no part of the dynamic Interpretant. But the agitations of passion and of surprise are the actual dynamic Interpretants. So surprise again has its Active and its Passive variety; - the former when what one perceives positively conflicts with expectation, the latter when having no positive expectation but only the absence of any suspicion of anything out of the common something quite unexpected occurs, - such as a total eclipse of the sun which one had not anticipated. Any surprise involves a resistance to accepting the fact. One rubs one’s eyes, as Shaler used to do, determined not to admit the observation until it is plain one will be compelled to do so. Thus every actual interpretation is dyadic … [As] pragmaticism says … (one part of pragmaticism, for Pragmaticism is not exclusively an opinion about the Dynamic Interpretant), … it says, for one thing, that the meaning of any sign for anybody consists in the way he reacts to the sign. When the captain of infantry gives the word “Ground arms!” the dynamic Interpretant is in the thump of the muskets on the ground, or rather it is the Act of their Minds. In its Active/Passive forms, the Dynamical Interpretant indefinitely approaches the character of the Final/Immediate Interpretant; and yet the distinction is absolute.

…it appears to me that all symptoms of disease, signs of weather, etc., have no utterer. For I do not think we can properly say that God utters any sign when He is the Creator of all things. But when [Lady Welby] says, as she does, that this is connected with Volition, I at once note that the volitional element of Interpretation is the Dynamical Interpretant.

As to the Object, that may mean the Object as cognized in the Sign and therefore an Idea, or it may be the Object as it is regardless of any particular aspect of it, the Object in such relations as unlimited and final study would show it to be. The former I call the Immediate Object, the latter the Dynamical Object. For the latter is the Object that Dynamical Science (or what at this day would be called “Objective” science) can investigate.

We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, - i.e., the Object as represented in the sign, - and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term; therefore:), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience.

The phaneron, as I now call it, the sum total all of the contents of human consciousness, which I believe is about what you (borrowing the term of Avenarius) call pure experience, - but I do not admit the point of view of Avenarius to be correct or to be consonant to any pragmatism, nor to yours, in particular, and therefore I do not like that phrase. For me experience is what life has forced upon us, - a vague idea no doubt. But my phaneron is not limited to what is forced upon us; it also embraces all that we most capriciously conjure up, not objects only but all modes of contents of cognitional consciousness.

…there is certainly a third kind of Interpretant, which I call the Final Interpretant, because it is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached. [—] In the Second Part of my Essay on Pragmatism, in the Popular Science of November 1877 and January 1878 I made three grades of Clearness of Interpretation. The first was such Familiarity as gave a person familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it. In his consciousness he seemed to himself to be quite at home with the sign. In short, it is Interpretation in Feeling. The second was Logical Analysis = Lady Welby’s Sense. The third was Pragmatistic Analysis [and] would seem to be a Dynamical Analysis, but [is] identified with the Final Interpretant.

…suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. I reply, let us suppose: “It is a stormy day.” Here is another sign. Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine - not the character of it, but the identity of it. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. Now it is easy to see that my attempt to draw this three-way, “trivialis” distinction, relates to a real and important three-way distinction, and yet that it is quite hazy and needs a vast deal of study before it is rendered perfect.

The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: “If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct.” By “conduct” I mean action under an intention of self-control. No event that occurs to any mind, no action of any mind can constitute the truth of that conditional proposition.

…there are writers who limit consciousness to what we know of the past which they mistake for the present and who thus think it to be a question whether we are to say the external world alone is real and the internal world fiction or whether we shall say that the internal world is the real and the external world a fiction. While the true idealism, the pragmatistic idealism, is that reality consists in the future.

…suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. I reply, let us suppose: “It is a stormy day.” Here is another sign. Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine - not the character of it, but the identity of it. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. Now it is easy to see that my attempt to draw this three-way, “trivialis” distinction, relates to a real and important three-way distinction, and yet that it is quite hazy and needs a vast deal of study before it is rendered perfect.

As to the Object, that may mean the Object as cognized in the Sign and therefore an Idea, or it may be the Object as it is regardless of any particular aspect of it, the Object in such relations as unlimited and final study would show it to be. The former I call the Immediate Object, the latter the Dynamical Object. For the latter is the Object that Dynamical Science (or what at this day would be called “Objective” science) can investigate.

We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, – i.e., the Object as represented in the sign, – and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term; therefore:), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience.

The third kind of warrant is that which justifies the use of a method of inference provided it be carried out to the end consistently. There are three kinds of inference of this kind. They are all inferences from random samples. The strongest is that which is a sample (that is, a collection) of units. In that case, the theory of errors is applicable. The second kind is where there are no definite multitudes but where, as the sample is enlarged, the inference becomes stronger and stronger. The third kind, which is the weakest of all forms of Induction, is where the only defence is that if the conclusion is false, its falsity will sometime be detected if the method of inference be persisted in long enough. [—] No inductive inference can be weaker than that and have any warrant at all.

Now let us pass to the Interpretant. I am far from having fully explained what the Object of a Sign is; but I have reached the point where further explanation must suppose some understanding of what the Interpretant is. The Sign creates something in the Mind of the Interpreter, which something, in that it has been so created by the sign, has been, in a mediate and relative way, also created by the Object of the Sign, although the Object is essentially other than the Sign. And this creature of the sign is called the Interpretant. It is created by the Sign; but not by the Sign quâ member of whichever of the Universes it belongs to; but it has been created by the Sign in its capacity of bearing the determination by the Object. It is created in a Mind (how far this mind must be real we shall see). All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. I do not mean by “collateral observation” acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. Thus if the Sign be the sentence ‘Hamlet was mad,’ to understand what this means one must know that men are sometimes in that strange state; one must have seen madmen or read about them; and it will be all the better if one specifically knows (and need not be driven to presume) what Shakespeare’s notion of insanity was. All that is collateral observation and is no part of the Interpretant. But to put together the different subjects as the sign represents them as related - that is the main of the Interpretant-forming. Take as an example of a Sign a genre painting. There is usually a lot in such a picture which can only be understood by virtue of acquaintance with customs. The style of the dresses for example, is no part of the significance, i.e. the deliverance, of the painting. It only tells what the subject of it is. Subject and Object are the same thing except for trifling distinctions. [—] But that which the writer aimed to point out to you, presuming you to have all the requisite collateral information, that is to say just the quality of the sympathetic element of the situation, generally a very familiar one - a something you probably never did so clearly realize before - that is the Interpretant of the Sign, - its ‘significance.’

[Lady Welby] reaches the conclusion that there are three senses in which words may be interpreted. She calls them Sense, Meaning, and Significance. [—] Sense seems to be the logical analysis or definition, for which I should prefer to stick to the old term Acception or Acceptation. [—] In the Second Part of my Essay on Pragmatism, in the Popular Science of November 1877 and January 1878, I made three grades of Clearness of Interpretation. The first was such Familiarity as gave a person familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it. In his consciousness he seemed to himself to be quite at home with the sign. In short, it is Interpretation in Feeling. The second was Logical Analysis = Lady Welby’s Sense. The third was Pragmaticistic Analysis [and] would seem to be a Dynamical Analysis, but [is] identified with the Final Interpretant.

A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt) by something other than itself, called its Object (or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence “Cain killled Abel,” in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the Object is accurately the Universe of which the Special Object is member, or part), while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object.

The phaneron, as I now call it, the sum total all of the contents of human consciousness, which I believe is about what you (borrowing the term of Avenarius) call pure experience, – but I do not admit the point of view of Avenarius to be correct or to be consonant to any pragmatism, nor to yours, in particular, and therefore I do not like that phrase. For me experience is what life has forced upon us, – a vague idea no doubt. But my phaneron is not limited to what is forced upon us; it also embraces all that we most capriciously conjure up, not objects only but all modes of contents of cognitional consciousness.

By mellonization (Gr. μέλλωγ the being about to do, to be, or to suffer) I mean that operation of logic by which what is conceived as having been (which I call conceived as parele’lythose) is conceived as repeated or extended indefinitely into what always will be (or what will some day be, that is, its absence will not always be, which equally involves mellonization, which does not assert anything but is merely a mode of conceiving). The conception of the real is derived by a mellonization of the constraint-side of double-sided consciousness. Therefore to say that it is the world of thought that is real is, when properly understood, to assert emphatically the reality of the public world of the indefinite future as against our past opinions of what it was to be.

We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, – i.e., the Object as represented in the sign, – and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term; therefore:), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience.

A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt) by something other than itself, called its Object […], while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object.

I start by defining what I mean by a Sign. It is something determined by something else, its Object, and itself influencing some person in such a way that that person becomes thereby mediately influenced or determined in some respect by that Object.

There are two kinds of Deduction; and it is truly significant that it should have been left for me to discover this. I first found, and subsequently proved, that every Deduction involves the observation of a Diagram (whether Optical, Tactical, or Acoustic) and having drawn the diagram (for I myself always work with Optical Diagrams) one finds the conclusion to be represented by it. Of course, a diagram is required to comprehend any assertion. My two genera of Deductions are first those in which any Diagram of a state of things in which the premisses are true represents the conclusion to be true and such reasoning I call Corollarial because all the corollaries that different editors have added to Euclid’s Elements are of this nature. Second kind. To the Diagram of the truth of the Premisses something else has to be added, which is usually a mere May-be, and then the conclusion appears. I call this Theorematic reasoning because all the most important theorems are of this nature.